Try as I might, I can’t even understand why he’s telling me this, or what it is even supposed to mean to me. I just sigh, and keep walking.

“So, why isn’t he here?” he asks me.

“Why did you punch the guy?” I ask him back.

“He said he knew my mother. Said she fucked her way up the company.”

I stopped, eyes-wide. “Really? He said that to you?”

“Yes, he did. I wouldn’t put it past her, but nobody else gets to say anything about her.”

“You talk about your own mother that way?”

“Hey,” he said, sucking in a huge drag of his cigarette. “I call it like I see it. Besides, I can’t imagine you’d have too many nice things to say about your pops.”

“He didn’t come because he was away on some work thing as well. Some kind of partner holiday. I can’t imagine why the partners would want to holiday together.”

“Sounds like he’s a prick.”

“Hey,” I say, turning on him and pointing a finger in his grill. “Don’t talk about my family.”

“See?” he says. “You get it.”

I blink. “Oh, why are you following me, Chance?”

He shrugs. “You want me to go, just say it, I’ll go.”

“Right, because you don’t care.”

“I don’t.”

I roll my eyes, but for some reason, I don’t tell him to go. We just walk in silence for a while. His shoulders bump into mine, and I think about stepping away again, but I just can’t be bothered to. I know him, the kind of boy he is. He just doesn’t stop… ever.

He must think of me as some kind of conquest, or something. That would be so him.

Well, I’m certainly not going to be just some notch.

Excerpt:

Unleashed

An MMA Stepbrother Romance

I do care. That’s the truth of it. I care, and I care a lot. She stole my attention the very first time I saw her at the beginning of the school year. I had to repeat because I cut too much class.

She was sitting right at the front, back rigidly erect, her mocha-brown hair neatly parted, so straight like it was ironed. And there I was, uniform shirt untucked, top button undone, and a whole lot of don’t-give-a-fuck in my attitude. It was a fancy school, but fuck uniforms forever.

Except on the girls. Except on Cassie. She made it look good. Everything was so neat, so proper, so tidy. Every blouse had no creases, every skirt worn to knee-length.

God, to get that skirt up her thighs… to tear that blouse open… the thought of it makes me rock hard in an instant.

But all year Cassie barely even looked at me. I can remember it to this day. All the other girls in the classroom did, of course. Even the class teacher would lick her lips at me every morning at attendance, shoot me anytime-you-want looks while practically panting, begging for it. Our teacher was young… well, for a teacher. Early thirties, I’d guess. But she wasn’t my type. Truth be told, once I met Cassie, nobody was my type anymore.

And that, there, is something that scares me. It’s a little secret I have, but you’d never fucking know it by looking at me.

I’ve not been with a girl since I saw Cassie that very first day of term.

Her eyes had wiped over me like I wasn’t even something to be acknowledged, and then they had gone right back to her textbook. There might have been a mild look of disgust on her face, like she’d just tasted something foul.

I read the page header as I walked to my customary seat at the back of the class: A Brief History of Political Science.

I didn’t even fucking know that our school had political science electives.

And now I’m walking with her along Sunset Way, and the sound of the surf is in my ears, and the smell of salt is on the air, and I’m waiting for her to tell me to go, because I will if she does. I don’t know why, exactly, but I will.

But she doesn’t say it. And we just keep walking. She veers onto the beach, and I walk there with her, feeling the soft sand beneath my shoes.

I feel it inside me, as I pull another drag from my cigarette, this growing ball of energy. I feel like I’ve got a fireball inside my gut, and it’s going to burst me at the seams.

She does things to me. Fuck, she really does. And… and I like it. I like it and I hate it. If this was any other chick I just wouldn’t fucking care. But look at me, walking on the fucking beach in the late afternoon with her.

I never thought I’d be a cliché.

“My father is a prick,” she says after a moment.

“Hey, it’s like a checklist,” I say. “Box one, daddy issues. Check.” I tick it off with my finger.

She scowls at me.

I don’t even know why I said it. It just came out of my mouth. I shrug. That’s who I am, why the fuck should I apologize for it?

“If you think I’ve got daddy issues, then you’ve got oedipal issues.” She flashes her eyes at me, challenging me. She thinks I don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s cute.

“No I don’t,” I say. “And that shit’s pretty much been debunked.”

“You know, for a dumbass jock, you have a surprising vocabulary.”

“I’m not a jock,” I say. “I don’t give a fuck about all that.”

“Right,” she says, rolling her eyes at me again. I just grin at her again. “You don’t give a fuck. Tell me something new. But you were a school athlete.”

“Hey, I take care of my body. I’m better than everyone else at every sport. Wrestling champ. It was easy credits. I had half the school watching me at practice.”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“So are you, just in a different way.”

“I am not full of myself!” she shouts.

That got a rise out of her.

“Really?” I challenge, walking in front of her and turning around. I’m walking backwards now, and I see her eyes roam up and down my body. I can see she’s trying not to meet my eyes. It’s… it’s hot. She’s hot. Now with the gown off, I can see the shape of her body. God, she’s got some hips on her, and thighs I’d massage for hours. And her ass… she’s got it there, alright. It makes my hands feel empty.

“Really,” she sniffs, looking toward the sea. “I’m definitely not full of myself.”

“Well, let me think. Today you’ve called me an idiot something like seven times, stupid three times, and basically all your insults have been aimed at my intelligence. I’d say you’re pretty up yourself in a very particular way.”